At our April event, How to Get Your Hardware Product to Market, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel of incredible founders and community organizers, from Zach Suppala of Particle to Kate Whitcomb of HAX Boost.

On the panel, we talked extensively about the importance of community in building products. From crowdfunding campaigns to Amazon reviews, building products that solve a need, as well as collaborative ecosystems that embrace feedback and collective expertise, was a consistent theme across the event.

This was an exciting topic for me as the community director at Fictiv, as we’re working on building many of the same mechanisms for our own company. Currently, knowledge on hardware development is siloed and hard to access, and many of the tools are difficult to use, an issue that we have been working tirelessly to address.

Our mission is, and will continue to be, to give everyone equal access to the tools required to build their hardware vision. While we’re building a platform that enables faster, more efficient production of parts, we’re also dedicated to facilitating an ecosystem of all the best tools and resources across the hardware development lifecycle.

To this end, we’re grateful to work with amazing engineers, designers, and machinists across startups, small businesses, and large enterprises alike to document and disseminate expert knowledge around how to design, develop and manufacture the highest quality hardware products.

Here’s how can you get involved in the Fictiv community today to be a part of a growing community of engineers and designers building incredible products.

Tell Your Story

On the Fictiv blog, we’re sharing the stories of the best and brightest of the hardware industry. Our Teardowns reveal the complexities that go into building products, and our Spotlights (like this most recent of a startup I had the pleasure of meeting at CES this year, WHILL) showcase incredible innovations in hardware design and engineering.

If you want Fictiv to spotlight your company, apply here to tell your story!

We’ve also been grateful to have incredible experts share their knowledge on how to best build hardware products, like Jennifer McCormick’s (founder of User Lens) 5 Essential Tips for User Testing Your Hardware Products. Want to share your knowledge with the hardware community? Check out our guest post guidelines for more details and email our content lead at christine@fictiv.com with your post idea.

Get Local at an Event

We believe hosting offline events is one of the key ways to help the hardware ecosystem thrive, connecting engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, and hardware enthusiasts face-to-face. Our panels, like our most recent on Designing for the User focus on solving very real challenges for hardware companies, with guidance from experts all across the industry.

Join our Meetup group to stay informed, or sign up for our SF events newsletter for all our local event updates.

Partner with Us

There are so many great companies and organizations in the hardware industry, each focusing on solving a specific problem for these companies. We’ve been delighted to partner with many of them to create content, events, and help produce parts.

From workshops with Highway1 and Wearable World, events in partnership with Bolt and Design Concepts, and even participating in the Power Racing Series at Maker Faire Bay Area with leading engineering firm Mindtribe, we’re thrilled to collaborate with companies who share our vision.

Supporting the Hardware Ecosystem, Starting with You

We’ve got a team dedicated to making it easier to build hardware, and we can’t do that without you. So I’m eager to hear from you—what community feature would make your development cycles easier? Want a Fictiv event in your city? How can we collaborate? What should we tear down next, or who would you like to see on our next panel?

Email me at madelynn@fictiv.com, or anyone on our team, and we can make the hardware ecosystem a more vibrant place, together.